By John Merwin

So I’d like to introduce you guys to my pal Tony the Lure Man. That happy-looking young fellow in the photo is Tony Witte, whose job it is to buy fishing lures for Cabela’s. All those great-looking lures you see in the catalogs at one time or another first had to pass muster with Tony. We were bass fishing together down Florida way a while back, where I tried picking the padlock on all those wonderful trade secrets he most certainly knows.

Tony is a very nice guy and, when it comes to corporate operations, also extremely circumspect. I’d ask him some penetrating journalist-type question. He’d grin at me and shake his head, not saying a word. But he did finally tell me a couple of things that I thought were interesting ...

By John Merwin

Do we really need camo-pattern fishing rods? I was wondering that this morning while noting that the “best new rod” category at the recent ICAST fishing-trade show was won by a new rod series decked out in a variety of camouflage finishes. It just struck me that making a rod less visible is going to make me more likely to step on it or to shut the rod tip in a car door.

By Joe Cermele

Last week, I got an email from loyal F&S reader Butch Cole. The photo you see below was attached. Butch writes:

"I was wondering if I could trouble you to post a picture of this 50 inch muskie somewhere for the world to see. It was stolen from me. I had it on display in a local motel and apparently someone decided they needed it more than I did. I am offering a no questions asked reward for the return or the location of it. It was stolen in Park Rapids, Minnesota."

By Joe Cermele

I was chatting with UK-based Tackle Trade World Editor Nick Marlow at ICAST and he was agog over Eagle Claw's new TroKar hooks. "They're like something you'd see in a hospital," he told me. "They're a bit scary." I immediately made my way over to find horror movie-like posters of bass pros with the Medieval TroKar logo under the slogan "Draw Blood." Well, I did draw blood with these hooks, some of which was my own.